"Paul-Loup Sulitzer - The Green King" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sulitzer Paul Loup)

"September 18, 1928."
"Khmrod is not a Jewish name, as far as I know."
"My mother's name was Itzkowitch."
"Haibjude then," said Tarras, who had already taken note of the two first names, one Christian, the other common in Jewish families, in Poland especially.
Silence. The boy started walking again, following the wall, going behind and, circling Tarras, reappearing at his left. He moved slowly, lingering in front of each photograph.
Tarras turned his head slightly and saw then that the boy's legs were trembling. A tremendous feeling of pity swept over him. This poor brat can hardly stand up! He watched Klimrod from the back, the bare feet in laceless boots probably too small for him, as were the pants and shirt, hopelessly short and floating on his thin, awkward body, which had been twisted time and time again by torture but which, still, by sheer strength of will, hadn't lost an inch of its height. Tarras also noticed his hands, long and fine, blotched by old scars of cigarette burns and quicklime; these hands hung alongside his body, unclenched, and Tarras knew from experience that this false nonchalance indicated a kind of self-control few adult men could achieve, himself included.
At that moment, he understood even more what had struck Settiniaz: Reb Michael Klimrod had a strange, inexplicable aura.
He retreated to his interrogation.
"When and how did you arrive at Mauthausen?"
"Last February. I am not sure of the date. Beginning of February." His voice was deep and his speech was very slow.
"By convoy?"
"No convoy."
"Who was with you?"
"The other boys who were buried with me."
"Someone had to bring you here."
"SS officers."
"How many in all?"
"About ten."
"Commanded by?"
"An Obersturmbannf№brer."
"Whose name was?"
Klimrod was now standing in the left corner of the room. Before him was an enlarged photograph taken by Blackstock of
the open door of a crematorium; the flash had made the half-charred bodies especially white.
"I don't know any names," said Klimrod quietly.
One of his hands moved, upward. His long fingers touched the glossy paper of the photograph, as if to caress it. After that he swung around, leaning against the wall. He was impassive, gazing into space, blank. His hair, which was starting to grow in, was dark brown.
"What gives you the right to ask me these questions? Be-cause you are American and have won the war?"
In God's name, thought Tarras, dumbfounded, for once in his life at a loss for words.
"I don't feel as if I've been defeated by the United States of America. In fact, I don't feel as if I've been defeated by anyone.

His eyes fell on a glass-fronted cabinet in which, next to stacks of files, Tarras had placed a few books. And it was the books he was looking at. .
"When we arrived here, at the beginning of February," said Klimrod, "we had come from Buchenwald. We were twenty-three before Buchenwald, but five boys were burned there and two others died between Buchenwald and Mauthausen. The officers who used us as women killed those two in the trucks and I buried them. They couldn't walk any more, they cried all the time, and they lost all their teeth, which made them less attractive. One was nine and the other was a little older, eleven maybe. The officers rode in a car and we were in a truck, but from time to time they made us get out and walk, sometimes run, holding us by cords tied around our necks. This was to make us lose the strength or even the desire to run away."
He pushed himself away from the wall with his hands. He was looking at the books with an almost hypnotic intensity, but he didn't stop talking, the way, thought Tarras, a school boy recites his lesson while looking at a bird outside.
"But before Buchenwald, where we arrived right after Christmas, we spent time in Chemnitz. Before Chemnitz, we were in the Groasrosen camp. Before Grossrosen, the Plaszow camp-that's in Poland, near Cracow and that was in the summer."
He moved completely away from the wall and began to walk slowly in the direction of the cabinet.
"But we stayed only three months at Plaszow, where some of the boys died, mostly from hunger. Six. I don't know their names. Before Plaszow, we walked for a very long time in the forest. . . . No, first we were at Przemyzl . . . but we walked before and after, for a long time. We were coming from the camp at Janowska. I was in Janowska twice. That time, in May of last year, and once before, in 1941, when I was twelve and a half."
His way of recounting was curious. He spilled out his memories backward, the way you rewind a film. He went three steps farther and was now directly in front of the books, separated only by a pane of glass.
"These books are yours?"
"Yes," said Tarras.
"The second time I was in Janowska, I was coming from Belzec. My mother, Hannah Itzkowitch, and my sister Mina died at Belzec on July 17, 1942. I saw them die. They were burned alive. May I open the cabinet and touch the books, please?"
"Yes," said Tarras, transfixed.
"My sister Mina was nine years old. I am absolutely positive that she was alive when they burned her. My other sister, Katarina, was two years older than I. She died in a railroad car that I was also supposed to get in. She climbed into a compartment meant to hold thirty-six people. They pushed in one hundred and twenty or one hundred and forty; the last ones in were lying on the heads of the others. On the floor, they had spread quicklime. My sister Katarina was among the first to go in. When they couldn't fit any more in, not even a child, they slid the doors shut, took the car to a siding and left it in the sun for seven days."
He read out loud: "Walt Whitman. Is he English or American?"
"American," said Tarras.
"He is a poet?"
"Like Verlaine," said Tarras.
The gray eyes touched his face, then went back to Leaves of Gmss. Tarras asked a question, and thought he would have to
ask it again, the answer was so long in coming. But the boy shook his head.
"Not yet; only a few words. But I am going to learn it. And Spanish also. And maybe other languages. Russian, for example."
Tarras looked down, then up. He felt lost. Sitting behind his desk, he hadn't moved since Reb Klimrod had come in, other than to scribble. He said suddenly: "Keep the book."
"It will take me a while."